Construction of N-doped carbon nano-hollow cubes under salt separation strategy

In this paper, N-doped carbon nano-hollow cubes (CNHCs) were successfully prepared for the first time by a salt separation strategy, which breaks through the morphological limitations of traditional hollow structures such as spherical or tubular. This study combines β-cyclodextrin (β-CD) with CO(NH2)2 to exploit the high-temperature stability of NaCl crystal. Precise modulation of the material morphology was achieved by high-temperature carbonisation (700 °C) of the self-assembled precursor and subsequent aqueous washing to remove the salt template. This study provides a novel salt separation strategy for the morphology design and functionalisation of carbon nanomaterials and expands the preparation of complex hollow structures.